The Educated Imagination

by Northrop Frye

Addressed to educators as well as the general reader, this important yet lively and readable book explores the value and uses of literature and its study in our scientific age, and offers a broad program for the teaching of literature in elementary and secondary schools.

Genres: Nonfiction, Education, Philosophy, Literary Criticism, Essays, Literature, Writing

159 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Born in Quebec but raised in New Brunswick, Frye studied at the University of Toronto and Victoria University. He was ordained to the ministry of the United Church of Canada and studied at Oxford before returning to UofT.

His first book, Fearful Symmetry, was published in 1947 to international acclaim. Until then, the prophetic poetry of William Blake had long been poorly understood, considered by some to be delusional ramblings. Frye found in it a system of metaphor derived from Paradise Lost and the Bible. His study of Blake's poetry was a major contribution. Moreover, Frye outlined an innovative manner of studying literature that was to deeply influence the study of literature in general. He was a major influence on, among others, Harold Bloom and Margaret Atwood.

In 1974-1975 Frye was the Norton professor at Harvard University.

Frye married Helen Kemp, an educator, editor and artist, in 1937. She died in Australia while accompanying Frye on a lecture tour. Two years after her death in 1986 he married Elizabeth Brown. He died in 1991 and was interred in Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto, Ontario. The Northrop Frye Centre at Victoria College at the University of Toronto was named in his honour.

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop...

Reviews

[Cindy Rollins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much easier than I expected which I chalk up to talking to Angelina Stanford about books for so many years.

My favorite chapter was The Verticals of Adam followed by The Vocation of Eloquence. I like his slow build to this height of thought.

Onward and upward.

“Novels can only be good or bad in their own categories. There’s no such thing as a morally bad novel: its moral effect depends entirely on the moral quality of the reader, and nobody can predict what that will be. And if literature isn’t morally bad it isn’t morally good either.”

“But Shakespeare’s plays weren’t produced by his experience: they were produced by his imagination, and the way to develop the imagination is to read a good book or two.”

“What poetry can give a student is, first of all, the sense of physical movement. Poetry is not irregular lines in a book, but something very close to dance and song, something to walk down streets keeping time to.”

[Mohammad Ranjbari · Rating 5 out of 5]

مطالعه ی این کتاب من را قانع کرد که تخیل واقعا فرهیخته است! در نهایت پی می بریم که جهان اسطوره ها چیزی جز کارکرد تاریخی ذهن در بستر زمانی که با کشف و تخیل همراه است، نیست!
انسان هایی که توانسته اند برج بابل یا دیوار چین را بنا کنند و به راحتی بر این سختی فائق بیایند، به همان راحتی نیز آن را به انحطاط و ویرانی سپرده اند. مسالۀ جالبی در این میان رخ می دهد و آن تلاش انسان برای ردیابی هر نوع اسطوره ای ست برای چسباندن و توام کردن آن با حقایق!
نورتروپ فرای با کیاست، مراحل نضج و شکل گیری اسطوره را بیان می کند. همه ی کلماتی که به کار می بریم به نوعی اسطوره هستند و مانند یک استعاره کم کم تازگی خود را از دست می دهند و تبدیل به کلمات معمولی می گردند.
نیروی تمامی اسطوره ها در تخیل نهان است.

تقریبا در همۀ اموری که بدانها دست می زنیم ترکیبی از عاطفه و هوش است که وارد عمل می شود و این ترکیب همان است که تخیلش می نامیم

اسطوره ها زمانمند هستند و بر اساس خواست و میل انسان رفتار می کنند. حتی در عصر مدرنیته ای که در آن زندگی می کنیم اسطوره ها بی خبر از ما زایش دارند. ممکن است حتی یک آگهی تبلیغاتی «روغیلا سرخیلا فامیلا... تا مصرف یک نوع آدامس و تماشای یک سریال نیز ما را در احاطۀ اسطوره ها قرار دهد.

آنچه در این بین زیباست غنا و آسودگی ناشی از ملاقات و بهره مندی از اسطوره است که انسان را انسان تر می کند

[Atlee Northmore · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really didn't mean to finish this all tonight. However, I felt a pull and understood what that pull was all about when I reached the end. I will definitely need to go back and look at my underlined sections (of which there were many). I started this book thinking I was going to learn about literary criticism and, instead, was forced to see the world I have been living in in a completely different way. A different language. I need to process all that I've read, but can't believe this is the first book I've read this year that actually brought me to tears. Frye has made me see that I have been "chasing status symbols" and that my imagination has been "starved and fed on shadows." An excellent work, and I can't wait to read more Northrop Frye this year!

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Northrop Frye! I find my way to his statue down by Victoria College once in a while. I take a good look at his smile and remember what this is all for. During my undergraduate years, I didn’t have time to appreciate his work. The library behind him was just a space to plop down and eat poutine (secretly, of course, in the stacks). Now we get to explore a bit more and get gems like these:

- “Literature is not religion, and it doesn’t address itself to belief. But if we shut the vision of it completely out of our minds, or insist on its being limited in various ways, something goes dead inside us, perhaps the one thing that it’s really important to keep alive.”

- “In all our literary experience there are two kinds of response. There is the direct experience of the work itself, while we’re reading a book or seeing a play, especially for the first time. This experience is uncritical, or rather pre-critical, so it’s not infallible. If our experience is limited, we can be roused to enthusiasm or carried away by something that we can later see to have been second-rate or even phony. Then there is the conscious, critical response we make after we’ve finished reading or left the theatre, where we compare what we’ve experienced with other things of the same kind, and form a judgment of value and proportion on it. This critical response, with practice, gradually makes our pre-critical responses more sensitive and accurate, or improves our taste, as we say. But behind our responses to individual works, there’s a bigger response to our literary experience as a whole, as a total possession.”

[Amber Tucker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found you by chance, my darling, on one of those voracious raids I make on Chapters when lucky enough to get near a city with one. I was thinking nervously of starting university in a few months, altogether doubtful of my worthiness to pursue an English degree, and this caught my eye. I knew nothing, or at least believed I did – or was afraid to believe in my grasp of anything at all. I decided it was high time I Took an Interest In Literary Theory. (My, my, aren't we a gung-ho little English major?) So I picked you up, slim volume that you are, and read you over a series of happy, early-morning book-with-coffee sessions. I kept notes while I read through you, silly notes of what was truly a mind-stretching lecture so valuably committed to paper. Immature as I was, you shaped me and deserve the truth, wonderful little book. This tribute cannot be enough, but here is a selection of what I was thinking about you.

"I am thus far hooked. I've read the first chapter through twice, and comprehended that much more for the extra reading. This is, hopefully, just what I need to reaffirm and elaborately develop my knowledge of how important literature... truly is to humankind, individual and social. It makes so much sense. 'The motive for metaphor ... is a desire to associate, and finally to identify, the human mind with that goes on outside it....' Yes, I know he's right, because I've experienced it. I am familiar with, amorous for that sense of connection with the entire world..."
- - - -
"It's such a basic statement, yet such a broad one... we use the imagination to create joy, and joy is created chiefly through the use of imagination (is basically what Frye is saying.... Note to self: look up D.H. Lawrence [after admiring an excerpt from "Song of a Man Who Has Come Through"].

"This is helping me find new ways to view life and literature in their primary relation to each other... I've always had this sense that most of the 'great' stories are hopeless ones, and that if I lived a blessed and optimistic life, it seemed less and les likely that I could become a 'person of literature.' But how could I bear to live in a world of no happy endings at all – of sad, inevitable pattern?
"Now I'm beginning to see, perhaps, another way. We write of our dark times, and of the hope that we may rise above them to be happy again.... the cycle Frye mentions is still happening, "of how man once lived in a golden age .. how that world is lost, and how we may some day be able to get it back again."
-- - -
"Funny how the stories a child invents are imaginary, while from a writer the same creations are deemed imaginative. Of course, when you think about it, the latter implies far more intention. If a child's games or tales hold symbolic elements that are also within literary convention ... The writer designs, specifically for the purpose of – what? Well, I guess that's what I'm reading this for.... Ah, and now he's connecting religion, science, politics –>allegories –>literature. Trés passionant, à moi.
- - - -
"So now I've got a good deal ahead of me. Yay. My ultimate goal? To decipher Finnegan's Wake. Without help. And right now? To read the Bible. Kind of makes me feel a tad nauseous. ... so I see that before I go for Paradise Lost I need to have a thorough understanding of the Bible and classic mythology. Damn, will I ever get to read these things? (I expect the same would go for The Iliad and The Odyssey ... god, don't know if I can even spell that....)"

- - - - - - -

"How can this talk have been given in 1962? It's today, it's me, it's us.

"I'm breathing fast and my brain fears to think as fast as it wants to; the dangers of hyperspeed are formidable. Yet I cannot wait to start reading this book again.

"It has everything I need right now, all that I've needed for months and cried about, literally and internally, for countless hours. The answers are here, for me: I hold them in this slim volume that was written forty-seven years ago and I could cry once again, with gratitude and relief and the transformative power of new-discovered insight.

"I know where I went wrong, and why (or most of why ... we are, after all, complex beings – but I can see now what [names of several counsellors] and myself never saw before). I know what's been unproductive over my months of struggling with spirit and mind. And I am beginning to know what to do next.

"This book has changed my life."

[ladydusk · Rating 4 out of 5]

I suspect multiple re-reads will be necessary to grasp the whole.

The ideas are important - nay invaluable - I think.

I wonder if reading the text while listening to his presentations would help with understanding the nuances.

I'm glad I recently read some of the books he discusses as they're helpful for glimpsing his arguments.

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Northrop Frye is a famous Canadian English literature professor who wrote quite a few books on literary theory, among other achievements. Several buildings at the University of Toronto have been named after him, and he's still a voice to be reckoned with in the field, though he died in 1991. In 1962 he took part in the CBC Massey Lectures with six lectures on "The Educated Imagination". This book is his six lectures, and if you're hoping for a review as intelligent as this book is, you've come to the wrong person.

Frye tackles many questions which revolve around the importance of studying literature and an analysis of literature, studying it, and having an imagination. He posits three kinds of language within a language - that of ordinary conversation and self-expression; of conveying information in a practical sense; and of the imagination, i.e. literature. That's overly simplified and there's no doubt a better way of summing it up, but that's what I've come up with. Naturally, arguments build one upon the other, and I would be setting myself a horrendous task to try to describe them in brief. It's just not possible, as the lectures cover a great deal. You'd be better to read the book itself.

Of all the lectures, I appreciated the last one the most, probably because it spoke to me the most. At one point he discusses freedom, and says "Nobody is capable of free speech unless he knows how to use language, and such knowledge is not a gift: it has to be learned and worked at." (p93) There can be no free speech in a mob, he says, only babble and grousing. What he doesn't say, but what he's saying, is that it's incredibly important for the lower classes to be well educated. With education comes not just the ability to express yourself articulately but to really see the world around you, and understand it. This is something that draws me to education, especially for the working class.

The other thing I loved about this lecture was how he validates having and using our imaginations, not relegating them to the realm of fantasy or child's play. He reveals how we use our imaginations constantly, how necessary the imagination is to everything, and how "literature speaks the language of the imagination, and the study of literature is supposed to train and improve the imagination." (p82) Which I absolutely agree with; the lectures give very good insight into how important the imagination - and an educated imagination - is to us.

At times his arguments read a little dated, but one in particular stands out, especially as it connects to the study of Dickens, which was what I was reading at the time, and helps me to understand why novels like A Week of This (Nathan Whitlock), which I read recently, don't have the same effect. "To bring anything really to life in literature," Frye says, "we can't be lifelike: we have to be literature-like." (p53) This is what he calls "writing badly", which Dickens does - it doesn't mean that he's a bad writer, but that he exaggerates and creates larger-than-life characters that feel more real than if they had been represented realistically. Reading Great Expectations you come across a great many of these characters, from Estella to Miss Havisham to the convict. Even Joe and Mrs Joe. They're almost like caricatures of themselves.

When you meet such a character as Micawber in Dickens, you don't feel that there must have been a man Dickens knew who was exactly like this: you feel that there's a bit of Micawber in almost everybody you know, including yourself. Our impressions of human life are picked up one by one, and remain for most of us loose and disorganized. But we constantly find things in literature that suddenly co-ordinate and bring into focus a great many such impressions, and this is part of what Aristotle means by the typical or universal human event. (p35)

Frye is a great proponent of classical literature and the necessity for studying the ancients, and then Shakespeare and Milton, and so on, as well as poetry. He has some good arguments that, re-worded, could work on the typical high school student. I'm not absolutely sure how much I agree, with his reasoning at least, but it's true that our culture and society is founded on such works and continues to influence them without our even realising or noticing - to be able to clearly see our world in such a way would take a lifetime of study. I don't think that the common way of throwing Macbeth in the faces of fifteen-year-olds works at all; in fact, it has a detrimental effect. The problem is that most English teachers don't get or like Shakespeare either - it's a cycle.

While Frye is a terrible name-dropper and obviously knows - knew - his shit, he sometimes reads like a stuffy academic who annoyingly links everything back to the Bible. That's not a bad thing, except it comes across as a bit narrow - you get caught up in his arguments, which are well-expressed in general, and suckered into his way of thinking. The margins are littered with my comments and thoughts and counter-questions - this is a book you need to read armed with a pencil. There are lots of great quotes, and it's very readable, even if you don't have a background in English Lit. I recommend it to teachers and readers and the general populace alike, because it is very interesting and presents a solid argument for the validity of studying English lit - and writing literature in the first place - which I wish our politicians would appreciate.

[Ginger Bensman · Rating 5 out of 5]

These four brilliant, sequential, and tightly constructed essays make the case that the study of literature trains the imagination, and that the soul and ideals of any person, culture, or nation, are greatly impoverished in the absence of such training. Thought provoking and stimulating.

[Marc-Antoine · Rating 5 out of 5]

An insightful criticism of literature, had me nodding in agreement, saying humph out loud, or just plainly disagreeing, but what it did well was have me engaged.

[Miss Ravi · Rating 4 out of 5]

آدم‌های خیالباف می‌دانند که تخیّل چه کیفیت معجزه‌واری دارد و ادبیات چطور به تخیّل مجال می‌دهد که مثل مادیان سرخ‌یالی بتازد و دشت‌های بی‌مرز ذهن را فتح کند.
نورتروپ فرای می‌گوید که تخیّل زبانی برای ادبیات است. گفتاری برای خلق جهانی که ملموس اما متفاوت است. «موضع تخیّل در طرح کلی امور انسانی عبارت از ساختن الگوهای ممکن از تجربه‌های بشری است. در عالم تخیّل هر چه در مخیله بگنجد رواست». پس لازم نیست که جوانب احتیاط را رعایت کرد، هر چند که ادبیات همواره از طریق باورپذیر بودن و جلب نیروی همذات‌پنداری مخاطبانش به حوزه‌ای جذاب و دوست‌داشتنی تبدیل شده. بدون شک جهانی با آدم‌هایی فاقد قدرت تخیّل بی‌مایه و تحمل‌ناپذیر است.

[Murat Dural · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aslında çok rahat başladığım bir kitaptı ama bölümler ilerledikçe bir nebze daha zorlaştığını söyleyebilirim. Bu biraz da "Hayal Gücünü Eğitmek" isminin okuru çağıran mesaj ve bunun farklı algılanması ile bağlantılı. Konunun özü şu; yazmak isteyenlerin ilk okumalarda tercih etmemesi ama yazanların muhakkak bakması gereken bir kitap. Naçizane yazma çabasında biri olarak beni hem donattığını hem güldürdüğünü söyleyebilirim. Bu eseri Türkçe'ye katanlara teşekkür ediyorum.

[Jenny]

I was impelled to finally finish this book because of its relevance to ideas raised by David Hicks in Norms and Nobility. The Educated Imagination's beautiful twofold thesis is that: 1)it is vital for education to include thorough training of the imagination and 2)literature is the thing that trains the imagination. For a literary critic, Frye writes simply and poetically, and I was surprised by how quick and good to read and soul-filling this book is.

The first page asks the question which Frye spends the rest of the book answering: "What good is the study of literature? Does it help us to think more clearly, or feel more sensitively, or live a better life than we could without it?" His answer, ultimately, is that literature is essential for all of these things--because imagination is essential for thinking clearly, feeling sensitively, and living the good life. And imagination, Frye insists, is trained primarily by literature (although he also says that studying the other arts and learning languages are the two essential ancillary pursuits).

Why exactly is imagination essential? Because, Frye says (echoing Chesterton and Lewis and so many others), only through exercising imagination can we get over ourselves, see through others' eyes, invent things, realize ideals, and truly be free. We have to exercise imagination in order to empathize with the people we are called to serve. Only through imagination can we really see another's perspective. Imagination leads scientists to their hypotheses as well as poets to their imagery. Imagination gives us the ability to aim for a political, social, or educational ideal that is not currently happening in front of our immediate senses. And imagination helps us take what is happening in front of us and apply it in other situations and areas of our lives. [Some of these examples are my own applications of Frye's observations.]

And how does literature train our imagination? By exercising it, teaching it categories with which to understand the world, and giving it vastly broader experiences than any person in real life can hope to attain. "No matter how much experience we may gather in life, we can never in life get the dimension of experience that the imagination gives to us. Only the arts and sciences can do that, and of these, only literature gives us the sweep and range of human imagination as it sees itself."

Frye ends by saying that "the art of listening to stories" is the most important element of educating the imagination. Teachers who wish to train their students' imaginations well (and, he adds, you will either be training them to have good imaginations or bad ones--there is no neutral ground) will firstly make sure that their students know the whole narrative of the Bible thoroughly. Secondly, students must learn Greek and Roman mythology.

Although Frye says much about how imagination is needed to love one's neighbor, he does not make the final connection to the imagination's relationship to loving God. My chief disappointment with this book is Frye's silence regarding imagination's vital position in faith. In my own life, imagination plays its most critical role as at least a part of "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen," and I closed the book wishing that Frye had applied his brilliant insights to this area of imagination as well.

[Ugur Kaya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kelimelere, bağlamlarına, biz onları kullandıktan sonra giyindiği, dönüştüğü şeylere, ona özel biçtiğimiz libaslara, burada ruhumuzun ve seciyemizin dönüştüğü, kimi zaman refleksle kimi zaman da hesaplı tepkilere dair bana göre bir Dostoyevski rahatsızlığı ve farkındalığıyla somutlaştırılmış hazine değerinde bir düşünceler toplamı bu kitap. Nurdan Gürbilek’in son röportajında serdettiği bir çok şeye Frye’da da tesadüf etmek Frye’ın metnini daha da katmanlaştırdı gözümde. Enfes.

[Gabriela Ventura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Esse pequeno livro é uma pérola, e fico muito feliz por ter sido traduzido.

Ele reúne seis falas que o crítico literário e professor canadense proferiu durante o ciclo de Palestras Massey, em 1962. (Em tempo: para quem não conhece, The Massey Lectures acontecem desde 1961 e contam com acadêmicos, escritores e filósofos. Grande parte dos áudios completos podem ser encontrados no Youtube, e, fuçando um pouquinho, não é difícil achar as transcrições. Segue a lista geral para referência posterior, eu recomendo imensamente - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massey_...)

Ao longo das palestras, Northrop Frye tenta responder questões que se impôs durante seus anos como professor: "Para que serve o estudo de Literatura? Será que ele ajuda a pensar com mais clareza, ou a perceber com mais sensibilidade, ou a viver melhor?". Ele oferece uma série de respostas possíveis sem cair em utilitarismos baratos ou academicismos chatos. Ele consegue ser profundamente interessante para uma plateia de leigos, e só isso já faz com que eu o respeite imensamente.

Eu posso passar muito tempo falando sobre como gosto do Frye, ou por que acho que todo mundo que se interessa por teoria e crítica literária, bem como pelo ensino de literatura (e por que não, pela literatura em si) deveria ler este livro. Mas vou deixar que ele fale por si, porque é claro que ele o faz bem melhor do que eu:

"É muito comum pensar no estudo da Literatura, ou mesmo no estudo de uma língua, como uma espécie de métier elegante, uma questão de ser bom em gramática ou de manter as leituras em dia. Estou tentando mostrar que o assunto é um pouco mais sério do que isso. Não vejo separação possível entre o estudo da língua ou da literatura e a questão da liberdade de expressão, que todos sabemos ser fundamental para nossa sociedade. O âmbito da fala corriqueira, na minha visão, é um campo de batalha entre duas formas de discurso social: o discurso de uma turba e o discurso de uma sociedade livre. O da turba representa o clichê, a ideia pré-fabricada e o falatório automático, e leva-nos inevitavelmente da ilusão à histeria. (...) Liberdade de expressão, ademais, não é resmungar e reclamar que o país está um caos, e que todo político é corrupto, mentiroso, etc, etc. O resmungo nunca vai além de clichês dessa espécie, e o cinismo vago que eles exprimem é a atitude de quem anda procurando alguma turba a que se juntar.
Liberdade nada tem a ver com a falta de exercício: ela é produto do exercício. Não se é livre para ir e vir a menos que se tenha aprendido a andar, e não se é livre para tocar piano a menos que se pratique. Ninguém é capaz de manifestar liberdade de expressão a menos que saiba usar a linguagem, e este conhecimento não é uma dádiva: precisa ser aprendido e trabalhado."

[Carol Bakker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Do you ever read a book, but can't recall how or why it landed on your TBR list? That is *not* the case with this book. Karen Glass in a blog post, The Best Books of 2008, introduced me to this book on December 31, 2008. Based on the other authors she referenced — Chinua Achebe, Andrea Levy, Wendell Berry, Jan Karon, George Eliot, P.G. Wodehouse, and Cormac McCarthy — and on her glowing summary, I moved The Educated Imagination to the top of my TBR.

I should rave over this book. I'm disappointed with myself that I don't. Truth is, I have partially read it four times. Because the line of thinking builds on previous chapters, I've started from the beginning each time. The book, only 156 pages, is one that requires contemplation. The effort was rewarding enough for me to keep trying. For nine years it's glared at me and taunted my infidelity. It required tough love and a deadline: if I didn't finish it by 8/31/17 I was giving the book away.

While I copied several quotes, I continue to struggle to give a short synopsis of his thoughts on literature. This time I read it slowly and carefully, but the main points could not find purchase on my slippery receptors.

Here are some gems I gathered:

If you say this talk is dry and dull, you're using figures associating it with bread and bread knives.

Art begins as soon as "I don't like this" turns into "this is not the way I could imagine it."

Literature keeps presenting the most vicious things to us as entertainment, but what it appeals to is not any pleasure in these things, but the exhilaration of standing apart from them and being able to see them for what they are because they aren't really happening.

I could paint this on a wooden sign and hang it up in my house:

It seems to be very difficult for many people to understand the reality and intensity of literary experience.

I nodded my head in vigorous assent:

You keep associating your literary experiences together: you're always being reminded of some other story you read or movie you saw or character that impressed you.

I kept turning pages and finding my marks on the pages. Like my experience with Dickens' Hard Time, I didn't recognize I'd already finished this until I arrived at the last few pages. Oy.

[diario_de_um_leitor_pjv · Rating 3 out of 5]

O título original deste conjunto de conferências do canadiano Northrop Frye é "Educated Imagination". Neste sentido o cultivar e o desenvolve4 da imaginação é o elemento essencial da sua proposta analítica da (sua) teoria literária.

O autor defende e potencia na sua argumentação - estruturalista q. b. - a necessidade de aprendizagem da língua e da linguagem como elemento fundamental para o treino, posterior, da imaginação e para a aprendizagem literária.

O texto é claro que imaginação, aprendizagem e literatura que entrecruzam como elementos constitutivos da fruição do texto enquanto arte.

Centrado especialmente no campo poético, e aí na anglofonia, o autor vai nos fornecendo interessantes pistas para debate posterior, o que torna a leitura agradável.

[Shaina Herrmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars! I loved this. Seriously, I devoured it. I've heard Angelina Stanford quote him a number of times now so I had a fairly good idea of what to expect with this book. I was a little surprised at how quick and easy of a read it was!

[gøkhan kiyici · Rating 5 out of 5]

eğitimle, edebiyatla, tasarımla, düşünceyle, kelimelerle arası iyi olanların seveceği, geriye kalanlarınsa bu ilişkileri geliştirmek üzere okumasının yaygınlaşmasını dileyeceğim bir kitap.

[Grace RS · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would have loved to read this book straight through in one sitting to keep in mind all his arguments. He alludes to Plato's Cave Allegory, explaining that the life we perceive is built on shadows (social conventions, propaganda, euphemisms, illusions, prejudice, cliches, etc.); however, the real world, the ideal one, is revealed in the arts and sciences. Reading good books will reshape our vision, train our sensibilities, and will provide us with faith; ultimately, it will retrain the imagination and lead toward a new identity. It connects us to a much larger pattern of life--that of the human experience, where the individual represents all of mankind. Suspension of belief is required in reading, and it allows us to see a discrepancy between the world in which we live and the world in which we would like to live. Moreover, reading instills eloquence and critical thinking--the loss of language leads to the loss of civilization. Good literature preserves culture, reminding us of what it means to be human and what we don't want to lose.

He expounds on what literature is not: it's not an escape from reality, nor is it didactic morality. It is not pure self-expression, where one reads to learn about the author's life and thoughts. It is not to be read inside-out, reading to learn history or sociology: literature is about all of human life. While it can be these things, this is not why we read literature.

Frye discusses how the literary forms already exist, and writers borrow old stories and forms to say something new; therefore, stories converse with other stories. Literature is to be learned as whole: "There's a complete world of which every work of literature forms a part."

Some quotes I like:
"If we don't know the Bible and the central stories of Greek and Roman literature, we can still read books and see plays, but our knowledge of literature can't grow."
"Novels can only be good or bad in their own categories. There's no such thing as a morally bad novel: its moral effect depends entirely on the moral quality of its reader."

[Danny Druid · Rating 4 out of 5]

I only had two problems with this brilliantly insightful book. The first is not the books fault but mine: I had read this book in bits and pieces during my travelling back to my hometown from college. This wasn't smart, as this very short and very intellectually rigorous book is truly meant to be very carefully and perhaps even all at once, since it is one cohesive argument all throughout.

The second problem is not my own but rather a problem with Northrop Frye's vision. I know it is probably arrogant of me to criticize a scholar of the finest calibre and I am fully aware that Northrop Frye is infinitely smarter than me, but when has arrogance ever stopped me from doing anything? One of the important foundations of Northrop's argument is that there is a sort of pre-rational, mystical, and almost animistic view of the world that Literature seeks to return us to. The argument goes that in the past people felt that there was a deep connection between the outer world that we perceive and the "world" of our experience. However, really, the outer world is objective and impersonal and the inner world is totally subjective. There is no real harmony between the two, says Northrop.Now, perhaps it is the superstitious poet/madman in me that says this, but I do not think that this is the case. I think that this mystical inner/outer unitive vision that ancient people had was reality, and humanity's feverish obsession with literature shows not our desire to connect to our primitive but misguided selves but rather it shows our longing to return to reality. This is a small, tiny grievance with Northrop and his argument is brilliant nonetheless. I just feel we should give the part of ourselves that Northrop calls "primitive" but which is actually "intuitive" or "mystical" more credit.

Northrop, and most of us, believe that we are egos with very involving but completely subjective (and therefore, meaningless) inner lives. We exist in an outer world that is objectively meaningless and full of essentially dead, impersonal things. This belief is itself the product of modern man's sick imagination which literature can both heal and reveal.

As for that one beef I have with Northrop, everything else in this book is completely brilliant. Northrop's writing is incredibly lucid and easy to understand sen as he talks about the most profound and obscure topics. Northrop succeeds completely in arguing his case that the study of literature is as critical as studying math and science. Northrop's argument is even more important in the 21st century where people are willing to completely brush aside Literature, and the rest of the humanities, for the sake of the STEM fields.

Overall, a commendable book (because he has succeeded at a noble task) that is worth re-reading again and again (I know I will be doing that myself, and I look forward to it!). I recommend this to every breathing human being.

[Lisa Kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book, first published in 1964 speaks loudly to today's parent and teacher. Frye sees clearly what today's culture has lost...that the reading of good books informs a child's ability to think, perceive and imagine.

"It is clear that the end of literary teaching is not simply the admiration of literature, it's something more like the transfer of imaginative energy from literature to the student."

In 2023, high school and college students often complain of being overcome by grief and anxiety. They can't imagine a better life, or even a better day because those imaginations are stilted and uninformed. Each of us requires a deep well of experience in stories of those who have overcome so that we ourselves can have the same hope. Oh, that good stories would feed us and lead us to the one real Story that will ever disappoint.

[Timilyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book gets better every time I read it. Uncle Norrie is the bees knees!

[Annie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I will be reading this one again. Why does literature matter? There are no right answers, Frye says, only less wrong answers. It’s a lot for the brain to hold in a one day read, but I was really enjoying it. I look forward to returning to it again once the words have steeped in my brain for awhile.

[Leandro Texeira · Rating 5 out of 5]

Espetacular. É um livro necessário para todos, especialmente para quem é pai ou é responsável por educar uma criança.

[Minte · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Literature speaks the language of the imagination, and the study of literature is supposed to train and improve the imagination."

I essentially read this book twice--once (foolishly) without a pencil, twice going back to underline every thought which made me go "hmmm" or "ah!" So much to dig through here about the importance of language, story, poetry, myth, and the fundamental nature of imagination to everything we do as humans. A series of lectures turned into essays, Frye culminates his talk by saying imagination is critical to forming society, so we're much better off training it well with the best of literature. I don't know that I agree with everything he said, but I have been talking about it too much and will definitely return to dwell on these pages.

[Chelsea Medina · Rating 5 out of 5]

A handy piece of literature to have in your back pocket before a lecture. I wouldn’t assign an entire reading to a class—the language may be tiresome for high schoolers. However, my copy is completely annotated and I will be pulling passages as supplemental work. WARNING: This was published in 1964 and the language is dated// could come off as offensive to some.

[Saul]

I feel like the title of this book was a bit misleading. It's not really about "education" at all, but almost entirely about "imagination". It's a very short and accessible overview of Northrop Frye's views of literature and the importance of studying it. There are some important ideas here that pop up in Frye's other works, and I think this would be the best place to start before jumping into his other books (which can be challenging).

[Katelynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finally was able to read some of the wonderful Frye quotes I always hear in their own habitat! I was not expecting this to be as easy to read as it was and I didn’t want to put it down. It was very good. He covers in the last chapter even more to the point why we need literature today, if I’m phrasing that right, and it was sad to think about society but also incredibly hopeful for those carrying on the tradition.

[Abigail B · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Literature speaks the language of the imagination, and the study of literature is supposed to train and improve the imagination”.

Simultaneously philosophical and practical. A great read for those who are intrigued by the imagination, language, literature, mythology, and society.

[Jordan Carlson]

I think this book was wonderful and in places I also think I had no idea what was going on. The last two chapters were especially good though, or helpful to me anyway. Very good on education, free speech and the use and importance of language and literature.